a return to previous misgivings

There are moments that outlast all other moments. Instances that burn. There are words regretfully let loose, deeds unchangeable. There is sincere remorse and masked apology. There is revenge, hatred, an unending suffering caused out of carelessness. There is a limit to the cruelty with which we treat each other. There is the limit of time. Amidst the dark there is at times, light.

It is hardest to be visible, bare and unmasked. It is hardest to say the words and not write them. Yet the journey is ending and another bound to begin shortly. I have used you. Used you and your time alike. Much like a rambunctious child, I have needed your attention to sooth the worries and doubts, the aches of enduring the never apparent success. Faithful and loyal companion, you have done great service. Your sacrifice will not go unnoticed or unmentioned. Thank you.

In turn lean your weight, any time, lean so I can hold your worried soul. I would do that and much more. Like a stone firmly locked in sand, constantly ground to the bone, I am washed over and away, but steadily withstanding. Enduring web of interlocking crystals, ready to hold your lean body forever. In time, in history we will always remain. Stay a print between heavy armoured skeletons, pressing layers of endless rocks.

I will now take my words of sorrow and doom and turn them into glittering memories of silver and gold. I wrote as well as I could. I will continue but plan not to insist your assistance, I will not take your time or hope. If you wonder what previous writings were about, know this: I have not gained or lost love. I have not hurt or been hurt. I have not lost my way but stay constantly searching. I have been broken and often mended. I have been cast aside and walked the hellish path back to existence. I have experienced kindness and cruelness. I have given but taken far more. I overstayed my welcome and have given up on hope. I have not seen or done anything different to you. I have lived.  

‘til there never really was at all

These last few days, the last few chances, the remorseful but unapologetic ending. Here I am, unable to resist and in deep mourning for all that I am about to let go. Longing eyes looking back, searching ahead. There were times of great achievement and moments of grandeur. There were days and months dipped in sorrow, rightful breaking of spirit and heart. Nothing compared to the loneliness, that elevating freedom of my untamed soul. Gulping in chunks the unmelted injustices stirred my way. Each and every moment of repression lead to fearless liberation. Like in history countless times, in quotes taken from men and women of power, the spirit shall never and can never be caged. Not through hardship of the body or torment of the mind. Nothing of the sort befell me, just some self imposed shackles, murderous chains to cut the warm blood bringing life to my fragile heart. I alone survived. Look, I have survived!

Some nights I feel hollow. Empty and meaningless, insignificant and useless, important to too few. At times I want to bring an abrupt end, see how that would play out. Then I quickly dream of a prolonged showing of this wondrous story. The constant push and pull, the cold and warm, summer and winter, the icicles and the scorching heat, they all teach me patience. Agreeable as the morning landscape appears to me, the smiling faces of familiarity, the soothing sounds or the balmy early air, I still often wish it away. Wish to change it for something new. Unseen and unrecognised, my restless soul would like to wonder, roam the vast lands of nothing, the arid deserts of lovelessness. I could lose myself. Lose the burden of mediocrity.

The change must come from within. I think I have known that all along. These words were just feigning to create an illusion. How long before it gets easier I wonder. I have waited far too long, wasted much too much time. It seems I am still not ready, there is still some waiting to be done. Knowledge to master, experiences to fill my young heart. Sadness has not been able to grow strong its roots in my soul. Sorrow has not had the chance to fully unpack its grey canopy over all I know to be true. Then come and conquer, I have never resisted much, just enough to learn the tricks then stepped aside. I have made a good home for the bitter winds and torturing loneliness, the sharp instruments that sometimes were called hurtful words. I used them like an apprentice tries the tools of his trade. Used them and made cuts, wounds on some innocent bystanders, friends, familiar lovers. Now I beg for forgiveness. How I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive.

I am yet to make sense of everything around me. I know parts of my soul, but not the whole. I know how sadness feels. Know how deeply it can cut, how silently it penetrates skin, tissue, sinew, muscle, bone. I know how comforting lonely seems, how invisibly it settles to choke one capillary at a time. I know my place between sorrow and alone, fight to portray them lovely and friendly, but know that they are killing the most precious gift: hope. Still I turn a blind eye, embrace these cloaked enemies for they help to conjure the words late at night. For as long as I can, as long as it can continue I try to waltz toward the unseen, all the while chained to the known evil. I go on, there is nothing else I know to do. I continue into the early hours, with tears streaming down my cheeks, blood gushing from my heart, aches and pains in my fingers. In the hope of a promise, in the faint hope that one day all this will change. In the hope that I can be better, that my words will have power, that I will overcome the sadness. I continue but secretly know that most efforts are in vain, are nothing but hollow tries at changing the set ways of destiny. I know that to walk this path means marching endlessly. Marching towards that which never really was at all. 

This year's love

Is this. You are reading it. Or not. Makes little difference because it is not your love, it might not even be anything you like. It may make you feel uncomfortable, uneasy, confused by the senseless and orderless arrangement of words and sometimes emotions which are hard to decipher. When you feel adventurous you begin, mostly you never do. As abundant as my heart is, my words can only be my love. So complete. Grounding force which keeps me sane, which allows me to unmask. Completely. For you just a pastime, just something to do while the rain washes the trees outside. While the snowstorm subsides. But my soul moves with each letter typed. Stirs from its motionless sleep and looks forward to parading the beautiful creation, the curves and luscious harmonies of certain words leaning against the other. Like lovers hidden, like lustful glances across the room, like two people waiting to accidentally meet: be at the same place at the same time. These are my loves and I harbour no anger if you cannot join in. This for me is a lonely road, a solitary journey on which you can be company, but by no means are forced to take part.

This year’s love is unspoken, softly hanging in the shadows, gently rising to open the doors and windows. Then I see. Maybe only for a moment, but that decisive moment covers all doubt, rips the shaky esteem from the place of unsure and plants it straight in the middle of all that is visible. I become visible to those who choose to see. Bare but almost nonchalantly proud, I allude to my successes but only faintly. Only very quietly, most are unable to hear and therefore cannot judge. This is a fragile love, a fragile heart, not meant to stand the battering or praise. I am to grow on this journey. I alone have all the world to learn. You may know already the things I discover, may be bored by the things I decide to put on paper, but this is my path. My way of walking, of being.  My soul is young, forgive me if you already know the sentence that follows before I even think to continue the thought. You could never hurt me. These words live for me and they were chosen in this order to represent, help me with the treacherous road that I must walk in life to get to the end. This is how it is easier. This is how I will make it to the very end.

I want nothing more than for these words to have a chance to be free. I fear for their successes, their failures. We cover each other, shelter from the cold, be the fire that burns inside. With them at times I burn. Alone or not, heard or not, read or not leads to the same conclusion, the same end result, because nothing else separates me from you. Only these words, only these fleeting moments, these elusive and indifferent times that teach me all I need to know about myself. I am slowly saved. Saved from the savage reality forced upon my generation. Saved to become in wholeness all that I ever want to be. Saved to be free and content in this undertaking which will see me fail, see me hurt, see me turn from the single most fulfilling thing I know to exist in this life. This is why I write. This is why I try to write. 

This year’s love is this. You are reading it. You may like it, mostly you do not. I may need you to keep reading or I may let you go at the very top, give you permission to leave, allow you to fill the gaps on your own accord, how you wish it to continue. I will love you no matter how you choose, so will my words. We will love you in darkness and in pain. Secretly we know that what you decide to not read or read has resonated, dislodged the deeply buried, hurtfully hidden parts. Here is safe, you can run away or stay. Cry or stay solemn. Sturdy through the storm or broken by the wildly falling summer rain. This year’s love is this. You and me and these words. This year’s love will last until my heart is torn no more. 

These words. The same heart.

Nothing is as violent as the sadness inside your heart. The constant, irresolute, the nameless pain which takes all the empty space in your heart. Underneath the surface you are stone. The softness of the falling snow, the gentle words that fly towards you softly courting your ears are unable to move you. You cry. This is not how you wish to be. The icicles are unable to melt on your fingers, the cold air outside cannot send chills down your back. The silent sadness is how you breathe, it is what keeps you alive, it is what breeds inside and allows you to create, to be. You cannot part with it, you do not know how. You cannot stop its growth. Like a malignant tumour that destroys you, like a lifeline of a blood vessel that saves you: this sadness is rooted deeply in you. No surgeon could fix you, no words could unplant it from your fragile heart. It is you.

There is a knot in your stomach and the words are gathering. With each beat they become braver, almost fearless and demand to be released. Obnoxiously confident, they have arrived at the page, clad with bulging hopes and aspirations. Just for a moment, for only a fleeting moment, life quickly escapes them. Then fear is securely locked back where the words came from. Fear of failure. Fear of uselessness. Fear of mediocrity. The crippling sadness is never lifted from your heart, even in instances when it seems to burn. All too quickly the veil, the web-like structure of doubt comes back and like cataract spreads over the seemingly tireless organ. The best trick of your words, but the substance is absent. The meaning lost, important only to a select few.

Take these words, I do not want them. They have caused me false hope, they have fooled me too many times. Smirking they watch me struggle. One after the other, arriving at my fingertips only with laborious work. I do not deserve them, I cannot do justice to their beauty. My heart is hurt, it is incurably sad. Hoping to create substance has only made me turn away from my words. At times I have abandoned them. With each attempt, which each loosely knit kite, words hanging onto each other, they just become ridiculed by their creator. I do not deserve them, they are wasted on such questionable talent. I cry for them, for their successes and failures. I nurture them and fear for their sudden deaths. I bring each and every one of them to life and then proceed to meticulously end them. I have tried to be a better keeper, a less demanding master, a more clear headed creator. I come back to this: this is what I come back to.

If you had more time, maybe you could learn how to heal the heart. You could learn to soften the stone. But never do. Please never banish the sadness. This is what makes the words come to life. This pain sees the most beautiful combinations blossom. For a moment and that is all that life is. If the sadness was lost, the possibility for substance would be lost as well. In every second, in every letter put to a word, in every sentence brining an end to a thought, I want to feel the earth pull at my bones. Pull at them with force, such unashamed force. I want to see, not just feel the end. Know that there is reason and urgency in creation. That these words need to find the page now.

I will keep my sad heart, I will write for me, at times for you. I will eventually learn that we all have the same heart, but for now I revel in mine’s sadness. I will walk the streets and meet strangers, I will write about love lost and found. I will be moved by melody every single day. I will curse my words and bash my ambitions to write. They will never take me to places of contentment. I will learn to surrender, give up. I will let my heart be touched by wonders. I will write for the rain, I will write for the quiet snow falling. For a heart burdened with sadness rain is majestic, but snow is divine. This is how I will live: in treacherous doubt and exceeding worry, gripping fear and the faint hope that this ethereal sadness in my heart teaches and betters me.